With a traditional network, severe latency penalties may be incurred when an acknowledgement or a simple response to a message must ascend all the way through stack(s) to a software level, then pass through aggregation queues and transmitter buffers, get routed back through a buffered packet-switched network, all before reaching a node which is expecting it.
Thus, due to such inefficiencies in the traditional network, a sending node may incur severe latency, potentially delaying its program execution until the response is received; often no response may be received resulting in a timeout and retransmission. In addition, a responding node's transmitter resources may be wasted, sending the often small-sized response messages. In some case, the network is flooded with additional IP packets, causing congestion and adding further delays. The efficiencies would be greatly improved if the sending node could be provided with a message's status in a more timely fashion.